


shatterproof

by gracieminabox



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Tearjerker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-30 05:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12646851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracieminabox/pseuds/gracieminabox
Summary: "Come home to him."Phil, after Daystrom.Not part of the "horizons" universe.





	shatterproof

_“Just got called in. Emergency session @ Daystrom. Flag officers/command teams. Gonna be late getting home.”_

_“Booooooo.”_

_“Sorry :( Love you tho”_

_“Love you. Pick up some butter on your way home. I’ll make curry.”_

_“Lentil and veggie?”_

_“Anything for you, dearest”_

_“Now I REALLY love you :D love you love you love you”_

_“Love you more, sweet :)”_

~

He’s delivering a baby when it happens. It’s a beautiful, picture-perfect delivery, the kind he probably should’ve shoved off on a nervous first-year to get his feet wet with an easy one - but no, he loves this family too much to put them in somebody else’s hands.

The surrogate, who has three babies of her own already - all delivered by Phil - has the squirming little boy out in three solid pushes. He’s term and pink and perfect, and his dads are weeping over the bassinet in minutes. Phil smiles, tends to his patient, and gets her settled in recovery, then returns to the side of the new dads, where they’re counting their little one’s fingers and toes again.

“Does he have a name yet?” Phil asks softly.

One of them looks up at Phil, eyes still red-rimmed from happy tears and a permanent grin on his face. “Christopher,” he answers.

Phil’s smile is wide and bright. “My favorite name.”

~

He’s washing his hands when he’s summoned to the ER. “Something’s happened,” the nurse says, like that tells him anything.

It’s a madhouse, with a lot of three-stripers and up. A fair few cuts and bruises that don’t look too serious, some embedded glass…the worst are the particle weapon injuries. Most people are treat and release, but Rick Barnett took one in the belly, and it looks like his spleen’s swiss cheese. He needs an OR. 

They’re getting ready to wheel him off when he grabs hold of Phil’s hand and holds it tight. His voice is breaking and he looks close to tears. “Phil, I’m _sorry_ , I’m _so sorry_.”

Phil writes it off as blood loss-induced emotionality and just pats his hand. “You’re gonna be fine, Admiral. We’ll take good care of you.”

They take Barnett away, and Phil walks out of the curtain to find Jim Kirk standing there. He’s in dress grays, though his hat is notably absent, and he’s covered in blood, though he appears to be of the lacerations-and-contusions crowd.

 _Which means it’s not his blood_ , Phil’s mind fills in.

He also looks like he’s been weeping his eyes out.

“Phil,” Jim says shakily, then purses his lips.

It’s only then that Phil puts it together. _Daystrom. They were all at Daystrom._

“Jim?” Phil asks, going into doctor mode, taking him by the shoulders and visually scanning him all over. “You hurt?”

“Phil,” Jim says by way of answer, “I need to talk to you.”

Prisha Ahluwalia materializes at Phil’s elbow, placing a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t even notice her walk up. “I will take Barnett,” the surgeon general says gently. “You go with Kirk.”

Phil lets himself be led to the family waiting room. It’s quiet and dark and his hands are shaking. 

And then Jim Kirk sits him down and destroys his world.

~

He doesn’t remember a lot of what happens after that.

He doesn’t remember collapsing into Jim’s chest sobbing, though he remembers the feel of the red-stained gray fabric on his cheek. He thinks maybe he threw up. His throat is sore - did he scream? Or is that just from vomiting? He doesn’t remember anyone who’s come in to offer condolences or see how he’s doing. He doesn’t remember who brought this blanket and tucked it over him as he lay across the chairs - he thinks maybe it was Hugh Culber, but he’s not sure.

He knows Jim hasn’t left his side. Not once.

“Captain Boyce? Er, excuse me… _Doctor_ Boyce?”

Phil looks up. A small woman with dark skin and hair wearing a yeoman’s insignia is standing over him, holding something to her chest.

She has Chris’ clothes. Phil doesn’t even have to look; he can smell them on her.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” she says gently, bending to his level. “I was ordered to bring you Admiral Pike’s personal effects.”

Chris has _personal effects_ , now.

Her hand lands on his shoulder. “My deepest sympathies on your loss, Doctor.”

She sets Chris’ things on the low table in front of the chairs, and Phil touches them all. His dress uniform cap - he always used to bitch about how it made his hair flat. Really, for such a beautiful, confident man, he was terribly insecure and vain sometimes. 

_(Was. Was. Was.)_

His grandfather’s Academy ring, the one he wore on his right ring finger - Phil had been with him the day he found it, lost in the artifacts of the Mojave house, but in an envelope labeled with Chris’ name in his grandfather’s handwriting, just waiting for him.

His uniform, still carrying the smell of his cheap citrusy shampoo, the same stuff he’s been using since the Academy, bright and warm and _home._ His uniform, with a gigantic scorch mark in the right chest, and a bloodstain that matches perfectly the one on Jim’s right hand.

His PADD, the battery gone dead. His comm, still bearing the last message they ever exchanged, about lentil and veggie curry. _love you love you love you._

His wallet. Phil opens it and takes everything out of it. Chris’ driver’s license (Phil runs his thumb over Chris’ signature, feeling the imprint of the pen on the back of the card). His Starfleet ID card (Phil flips it over and sees his own name listed as both Chris’ emergency contact and his primary care physician, Chris having never had the heart to change the latter after they became a couple). Chris’ credit chip. A handful of Chris’ business cards. Chris’ wallet-sized Federation passport. 

A picture that Phil didn’t even know Chris had. It’s of the two of them together, years into being best friends but decades before being a couple. They’re on the steps of his parents’ summer house on the coast of Maine, frosty longnecks in their hands. Chris is leaning his head on Phil’s shoulder and wearing a bright, smug smile. Phil’s got his arm around Chris and is looking down at the top of Chris’ head with this unmistakable look of complete adoration in his eyes.

Phil flips the picture over. _P &C ’35_, his dad’s handwriting proclaims.

Underneath it, in Chris’ untidy scrawl: _Come home to him._

Phil reaches for the trash can and throws up again.

~

Len eventually comes to collect Jim and force him home. He tries to do likewise with Phil, but Phil’s not budging. With effort, Len does manage to move him to the on-call room, where there’s an actual bed and Phil doesn’t have to lie down on these hard plastic chairs. Phil lets himself be led upstairs.

Halfway up, he realizes that he’s still clinging to Chris’ belongings so tightly that his fingers are losing feeling. He does not relax his grip. 

When he’s left alone again in the on-call room, he takes out Chris’ wallet and, again, takes out each and every item. Driver’s license, Starfleet ID card, credit chip, business cards, passport, picture. _Come home to him._

He does not sleep.

~

Two days later, he overhears a conversation in the hallway. Hugh and Len are having a disagreement on whether or not Phil should be sedated. Sounds like Hugh’s pro, Len con. Hugh’s saying something about “going on thirty hours without sleep” and “needs help to get him through the acute grief”; Len’s interrupting him about the difference between sedation and sleep. Jim cuts in as a voice of reason with the words “he’s sedate enough as it is right now.” Phil silently thanks him.

~

He doesn’t want to go home, but he also knows he has to go home eventually, so he lets Jim drive him back to their place _(his. his. his.)_ to face the music.

Walking inside is even worse than he expected, because oh sweet god, for a house that was originally just Phil’s, Chris is _everywhere._

Chris’ sneakers in the foyer, laces still tied. The futon Phil had bought for Chris when they were at the Academy, that Chris had slept on for years, in their front room. The words “UPDATE MY SOFTWARE” written in the dust of the replicator in Chris’ hand. The stylus by the PADD on the coffee table, set to the left, because Chris was the last one using it. The framed picture of their first Christmas as a couple on the wall, with Jim making bunny ears behind Chris’ head. Chris’ coffee cup on the nightstand, still with a little caking of sugar at the bottom of the mug. Chris’ gunmetal gray razor by the sink. His cheap citrus shampoo in the shower.

His smell on the sheets.

“I can’t sleep here,” Phil immediately blurts, turning around and walking straight into Jim, who grips him by the biceps.

“Phil - ”

“No, Jim,” Phil says, in a voice that sounds like broken glass. “Not without him. Not without C-Chris.” Phil’s voice breaks completely on his name, and he falls to his knees and wails. Jim holds him tight.

~

They find the motherfucker who killed Chris, somebody named John Harrison, and Jim’s gonna go bring him to justice. Phil hasn’t ever been a vengeful man and doesn’t have a violent bone in his body, but he implores Jim to go get the son of a bitch, and Jim does.

But he’s not about to leave Phil alone. He and Len recruit Sarah to fly out and babysit.

“Hey, baby brother,” she says when she shows up at his door. Phil imagines he must look rather like a junkie by now, having neither slept nor eaten for four days, completely stoned on grief. But Sarah just holds out her arms and lets Phil fall into them, and he feels very much like a baby brother even though they’re both in their fifties now. “I know,” she murmurs, running a hand over his back. “I know, honey.”

She knows not to call him _love_ , like she’s done in the past, because that’s Chris’ word.

Sarah has never been Lady Domestic, but she takes over. She strips their bed and washes their sheets, she cooks and actually manages to get Phil to take a few bites, and she gets Phil out of the house for moments at a time. She knows he can’t be around other people yet, but she convinces him to just walk around the block with her, just for a little while. 

“How long do you have off?” she asks.

“Up to three months,” Phil answers roughly. “It would’ve been six if he and I had been married.”

Sarah squeezes his hand.

“I’m going back next week, though,” he continues.

Sarah looks up at him, startled. “Phil…honey, I don’t know how I feel about that. You can’t sleep and you can barely feed yourself; you really want to put other people’s lives in your hands this soon?”

“I can’t sleep or feed myself because all I’m doing is _thinking about it,”_ Phil insists. “I need something to do. I need to not think about it for a while.”

Sarah wraps her arm around him. It’s February; the marine air is chilly. “I’m still not sure it’s a good idea,” she says honestly, “but I trust your judgment.”

Phil leans into her.

~

Phil’s coworkers are afraid of him, it seems. Everybody’s cutting him a wide berth, even the nurses who work with him every day and love him. The only one who’s not scared of him is Martha, his assistant of many years, who honestly should’ve been a physician in her own right but never wanted to leave him to go to med school. As soon as he walks into his office _(the office that faces Chris’ office, or what used to be Chris’ office, where they used to flirt and make kissy faces at one another across the way, except what used to be Chris’ office is now heartbreakingly dark)_ , Martha walks up to him and wraps her arms around him without a word, just holding him for several minutes. When she releases him, she hands him a daily schedule and directs him down to the ER.

He’s in the ER when the call comes in from Len. He takes one look at the screen and he knows.

He knows the look on his face. Len doesn’t have to say a word.

“He walked into the warp core,” Len says anyway. “But I’m gonna try to bring him back.”

Phil’s way too strung out at this point to even question the validity of what just came out of Len’s mouth. “What do you need from me?”

“A secluded corner, preferably first floor, where we can move medical genetics equipment in-room. A couple nurses who won’t ask too many questions. Bonus points if you can run interference with the ethics board.”

Phil just nods. “I’ll comm you in ten. Boyce out.”

And then he gets to work, because _not one more, motherfucker._

~

It takes seventeen round-the-clock days and the combined intellect of Len, Phil, and Spock to make it work. Len and Phil sleep in shifts, right there in the room; Spock only sleeps once, for about four hours. All three of them make some perfunctory attempts at encouraging the others to go home and get some real rest, but unsurprisingly, nobody leaves Jim’s side.

It works. Against all logic, against all odds, it actually _works_. Neuro activity, blood pressure, cardiac output, muscular control, response to stimuli…they all start trickling back into Jim. Len spends the agonizing waiting periods between moments of progress holding Jim’s hand, or kissing his forehead, or, in one particularly touching moment that Phil wakes up to one morning, shaving Jim’s face and combing his hair, talking to him lowly.

The ache for Chris is real, dulled though it has been by having something to do other than grieve twenty-four hours a day, and seeing Len give Jim such profoundly loving care ratchets that ache up to a stabbing pain in his chest.

~

Nyota Uhura comes to visit Jim and lets it slip, and Phil’s only human. 

“I heard you mind-melded with my partner in the moments before his death,” Phil says bluntly.

Spock stops what he’s doing and turns to face Phil, His face is perfectly Vulcan in its neutrality, but Phil thinks he detects a hint of shame underneath it, though he can’t claim to know Spock well enough to confirm that detection.

“Nyota spoke truthfully. I did initiate a mind meld with Admiral Pike in the period between his injury and his expiration.”

Phil swallows. “I only did one rotation on Vulcan in my fellowship, Commander, but my understanding was always that mind melds were intensely private things, usually only between family or intimate friends, and that consent on both ends is required. Is that not correct?”

Spock nods slowly. “It is.” 

“Did he consent?”

“Admiral Pike spoke nothing aloud after his injury.”

Phil clutches a stylus in his pocket, deeply tempted to snap it in two. “It bothers the hell out of me that you did that.”

“Then I owe you an apology,” Spock says contritely. “My intention was only to offer the Admiral comfort in the last moments of his life. However, I understand how you would believe my actions to be - to borrow a human expression - ‘taking liberties’ where I ought not.”

Phil turns back to the biobed monitor. Jim’s BP is up a few points - a good sign. “I wish you’d told me. I should’ve known. I should’ve _been_ there, but if I couldn’t be, then I should’ve known.”

Spock inclines his head. “Again, Captain - _Doctor_ ,” he corrects himself without being asked - “I apologize.”

They fall silent for a long moment before Phil breaks it.

“What did he think?”

Spock looks up to Phil. Phil continues. 

“Right before…right before,” he says. “What did he think?”

Spock sets his PADD to the side and steeples his fingertips. “Doctor, I know of the deeply intimate bond you and the Admiral shared, and I hesitate to cause you any greater pain than you already feel.”

Phil hears everything that doesn’t say. Chris’ last moments were full of pain, confusion, anger, regret, sadness, worry, fear.

“He thought primarily of you,” Spock continues after a moment. “He felt regret at the lost years you and he could have spent in each other’s company. He felt grief at the knowledge that you would be bereaved by his death. He expressed a desire that you not experience pain. A most illogical desire, given the inevitability of that very pain.” 

Phil closes his eyes, lets the tears fall, and excuses himself to the men’s room, where he falls to his knees and begins to sob until he can’t see.

~

Jim comes to on an overcast Tuesday afternoon. Spock and Phil both make to leave so Len can have some privacy with Jim, but Jim grabs hold of Phil’s wrist and stops him. He tugs Phil closer and awkwardly wraps his arms around him, hugging him as tightly as he can. 

“I heard him,” Jim whispers. “When I was…wherever I was. I heard him.” Phil closes his eyes, and Jim swallows. “Some part of him is still here. I don’t know what, exactly, but… _something_.”

~

It doesn’t take long for Jim and Len to start falling apart.

It’s going to take close to a year for the Enterprise to get rebuilt, but Jim’s already itching to go back up for a full five-year tour, like they were going to give to Chris. Len sits firmly in the “absolutely fucking not” class - he’s already lost Jim once to the dangers of space, and by god, he’s not gonna do it again. Their bickers turn to arguments turn to full-fledged fights, and it hurts the hell out of Phil’s heart to see it - but, in all honesty, his heart is hurting like hell so often that maybe he just can’t tell the difference anymore.

He turns into the same workaholic that he used to tease Chris about being, working back to back to back shifts, sleeping days at a time at the hospital, ingesting coffee and not much else. He works in the ER, which is mercifully busy but steady, without major catastrophes since Daystrom. Most of his days are spent tending to broken bones, appendicitis cases, engineering mishaps, and the odd toddler with a doo-dad up his nose. When he can, he spins up to the OR and flexes his general surgery skills, too.

He doesn’t set foot on the labor and delivery floor. Not once.

Head of the women’s health unit he may be, but being around all that bright shining beautiful new life when Chris’ has just been snuffed out is unthinkable.

One day, he wonders randomly how baby Christopher is doing. He wonders if reincarnation is real. It’s a fleeting thought, but one he’s rather attached to.

~

He’s supine on the futon one evening, sipping a beer, ostensibly watching something on TV but in reality just letting it play in the background while he zones out.

“What are you doing?”

Phil looks up. Chris is sitting on the arm of the couch, one arm lazily draped over the back.

“Oh, good,” Phil says aloud. “Hallucinations.”

Chris snorts. “You’re working forty hours at a stretch, sleeping in forty-five minute shifts, and surviving on coffee, beer, and the occasional snack bag of pretzels. Hallucinations were inevitable.”

Phil knows he’s not real, but he still can’t tear his eyes away. “I’m doing everything I can to not think about you.”

“Why?”

“Because if I think about you, I’ll want to die,” Phil says, not even realizing that that’s extremely, terrifyingly true.

“I don’t want you to die, Phil,” Chris says softly.

“I don’t want to die, either,” Phil says, pursing his lips. “I just want the pain to stop.”

Chris slips off the arm of the couch, so he’s sitting right next to Phil, and runs a hand down Phil’s face. Phil doesn’t feel any physical contact, except he _does_ , which is really weird. “Know what I love about you?”

Phil blinks; tears drip down his cheeks, past where Chris’ hand would be. “What?”

“How compassionate you are,” Chris answers. “How gentle you are. How deeply you love people. How you give every single person you meet permission to be who they are.” Chris’ hand is in Phil’s hair now; Phil knows it should feel like he’s running his fingers though it, brushing it away from his forehead. “It’s what makes you a purely good man, and the best friend I’ve ever known, and an incredible physician...and makes me the luckiest son of a bitch in the galaxy to be loved by you.” 

Phil lets a little sob go.

“Phil, my love, you’ve gotta do the same thing with yourself that you do with everybody else,” Chris murmurs. “Give yourself the same permission to feel that you give everybody else.”

Phil shakes his head. “It’ll tear me apart,” he protests. “I can’t survive it. Chris… _Chris_ , sweetheart, I _can’t_.” 

“You _can,”_ Chris protests right back. “You _can_ , baby, because you’re so much stronger than you ever, _ever_ give yourself credit for.” Chris’ eyes are soft and gentle and his voice is sweet music in Phil’s ears. “You always thought I was the strong one because I was the captain and I was in charge and I had to get the hell knocked out of me every once in a while for the greater good; but no, Phil, it’s _you_ , the one who was there for me every time I had my head up my ass, even when I was hurting you, even when I wasn’t listening to you, when you had to walk through hellfire to save a life or come up with new strategies to protect whole civilizations or teach me how not to do something stupid - _you’re_ the shatterproof one.”

Phil grabs Chris’ hand, but it’s only air. “I can’t let you go.”

Chris smiles a little and shrugs. “Then don’t,” he says simply. “You think I’m not gonna be over your shoulder haunting your ass until I get the okay to pull you out here with me? Like hell.” He tilts his head. “You don’t have to let me go if you don’t want to. But please, love, let _yourself_ go. Let yourself be Phil again. Everybody misses him. Including me.”

Phil is weeping now, tears flowing thick and fast and unstoppable, and he can tell Chris wants to brush them away but knows he can’t. 

“I’m here anytime you want to talk,” Chris says softly. His image is going soft around the edges, starting to fade away. “I love you, Phil.”

“I love you, Chris.” 

He fades, and fades, and fades, and then he’s gone.

~

Jim and Len’s fights are getting worse, and they’re on the verge of splintering apart completely. Len’s snappish and surly at work, and Jim’s gone horrifyingly quiet. The altruistic part of Phil wants to intervene - he knows what Chris would’ve wanted; no one was a bigger champion of Jim and Len becoming a couple - but the rest of Phil knows that he lacks the emotional capital to spend on that kind of exercise right now.

But then Jim shows up with a bag over one shoulder and puffy eyes. He spends a night on the futon, and that’s when Phil knows something has to be done.

He’s just glad Sarah lives so close to a nationwide transporter.

~

The next morning, Len comes in similarly puffy-eyed, possibly hungover, and looking like absolute garbage. Phil corners him in the locker room.

“Jim slept on our couch last night,” he says simply, not even catching the _our_.

Len sighs, then rubs the back of his neck. “We had another fight,” he mutters. “Phil, I don’t think we can make this work.”

“You can.”

“Not like it is right now, we damn sure can’t.”

“You can and you will,” Phil says, in his rarely used Captain Hardass tone that brokers no argument. “I damn sure didn’t get the love of my life ripped away from me just to watch you two start to crumble of your own goddamn free will.”

Len’s mouth shuts with a resounding _snap_.

Phil fishes in his scrub pocket, then pulls out a set of old-fashioned, non-digital keys. “Here’s what you’re gonna do,” he says. “You’re gonna leave me here to take your shift. You’re gonna go home and pack a bag. Then you’re gonna go pick Jim up from our house and take him to the shuttleport. Get on the next flight to Portland, Maine. When you get there, get in a cab and have them take you to Cape Elizabeth. It’s about fifteen minutes away. Number Four, Caroline Cove.” He presses the keys into Len’s hand, who looks at him flabbergasted.

“What do we do at Caroline Cove?” he asks.

Phil takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly. “You start over,” he answers. 

Len looks from the keys in his hands to Phil’s face, back to the keys, back to Phil’s face. Then he just nods, claps Phil on the shoulder, and walks away, out of the hospital.

In the quiet of the room, Phil reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out the picture of him and Chris on the steps of Caroline Cove almost twenty-five years ago. It was a beautiful summer day, humid as hell and making Chris’ hair curl up into ringlets, making Phil’s fingers itch to bury themselves in those ringlets. They were comfortable. Safe. Free. Complete with the other right there by their side.

 _Come home to him_ , Chris told himself, written along the back corner.

As he stands there, having just sent Len and Jim off to start their love story over, Phil wishes like hell that he could give him and Chris the same precious chance.


End file.
